This research set out to explore how French-speaking students (FSS) construct and negotiate their academic identities in a multiculturally contrasting academic milieu. Academic identity is described as academic self-esteem because it is required by students to take responsibility for their learning. It is a stipulation of communicated and negotiated trajectories of experiences that depict how people see themselves and how they are seen by others(Vandeyar, 2010). The negotiation of identity requires diverse dimensions of engagement with more knowledgeable others (MKO) (Reyes, 2007) in communities of practice (Wenger, 1998). Utilising the research strategy of narrative inquiry, case study, semistructured interviews, and focus group interviews, this paper explores how FSS perceived themselves in relation to how they took responsibility for their learning. It is argued in this paper that the development of the necessary academic self-esteem via the acquisition of locus of control, interest in schooling and self-efficacy can assist foreign students to take responsibility for their learning without having feelings of prejudice as they engage with MKO in academic communities of practice. The paper will conclude by suggesting that academic institutions can utilise engagement,devoid of discrimination as a tool to minimise dropout.

The requirement to explore the curriculum experiences of French-speaking students becomes imperative because of the transition they are compelled to make from French to English. This transition seems to be in relation to the curriculum of study and hidden curriculum experiences at their disposal. Their entry to higher education is as a result of the determination to become bilingual in an attempt to compete in a globalising world (Adebanji & Gumbo 2013

This paper set out to explore the conditions required for learning in an Academic

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This paper reports on the findings of a study in which we explored power relations and their effects on the curriculum experiences of French-speaking students in an Academic Community of Practice (ACOP) at a private tertiary institution. French-speaking students (FSS) negotiated the rigours of higher education as experienced by the other students in the midst of institutionalized power relations which limited their capacity to effectively integrate into the ACOP. A prominent consequence of linguistic power relations among French-speaking students (FSS) was a delayed transition from French to English. This was as a result of the monopoly of indigenous languages employed by South African students. Utilising a case study approach and narrative inquiry it was found that FSS had to grapple with the effects of linguistic power relations, financial power relations, inflationary power relations and workplace power relations. Lave and Wenger (1991,(115)(116) present a framework on which our findings are premised because their work evolved the "continuity-displacement contradiction" in communities of practice. We found that issues of the "continuity-displacement contradiction" were subdued with elapsed time as suggested by Lave and Wenger (1991) because those affected were continuously displaced from the terrains of relevance.